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While religion is a protected class, political orientation is not protected. It is perfectly legal (and moral) to ask someone if they are conservative before agreeing to do work for them.

You can even cite a policy to really drive it home: "I do not conduct business with racists, bigots, misogynists, homophobes, xenophobes, fascists or any other type of conservatives."

Cool but where do you draw the line? If a taxi driver refuses to drive you is it still fine? What if a teacher refuses to teach your children? Or if a doctor refuses to treat you?

And how do you differentiate between this and say, a shop, or a doctor? Do LGBT people not "have the right to the labour" of those services?

I disagree with that framing entirely. But I'm curious to know how you would differentiate.

Whether you see it or not, your opinion is carving out a way for legal bigotry when done by a christian. Of course an atheist refusing to serve this asshole bigot would open up the door for a religious discrimination case against the atheist because bigots want nothing more than to divide society. We have no obligation to defend a bigot's rights they are actively taking those same rights away from others.

No. He gets to choose who to work for. He doesn't get to choose not to work for entire classes of people when those classes are protected.

It's the same as if he said he didn't want black clients.

This potentially opened the floodgates for discrimination. Unless this is specifically only for for “hired” or “contract” If not…. Coming soon to stores in the south near you

“NO F****TS ALLOWED”

“TRA***ES NOT WELCOME”

Selective religion to suit their needs. Oldest trick in the literal book.

Jesus was white BTW

/s in case it wasn't abundantly clear

As someone who grew up in a very religious household, I can tell you without a doubt in my mind, the worst people I ever met were the church crowd. Everyone was so nice to each other inside the building but as soon as the service was over, people showed their real colors in the parking lot.

You'd get parents screaming at their kids for "misbehaving" during the boring ass sermon, cars bolting out of their parking spaces with no disregard for other people walking, cars battling each other to try and get out of the lot before the other guy.. You know.. Cause football was starting soon.

You can refuse for any reason - except those involving discrimination against a protected class. Sexual orientation is supposed to be a protected class. You can still discriminate, you just have to give another/no reason and make sure it doesn't look like you're doing it for a prohibited reason.

If I wanted to say that no people with glasses were allowed to shop in my store, that would be allowed. If I wanted to say that no pregnant women could shop in my store, that wouldn't be allowed. If it was a pregnant woman wearing glasses, I could claim the first reason, but then, if I was found to be allowing other people with glasses to shop, my reasoning would be challenged and I would have to demonstrate that I wasn't discriminating because of pregnancy.

At least, this is how discrimination laws are supposed to work.

It turns out that anti-discrimination laws in the US are actually very weak and not fully defined, allowing bullshit like this to seep out of judge's mouths and through the cracks. The Equal Protections Clause of the 14th Amendment only grants equality under law, so it only really affects governments. The Civil Rights Act extends this out to private employment under Title VII, but not much further.

What the 303 Creative v. Elenis ruling (the Supreme Court ruling that led to the settlement here) does, in theory, is allow any private person the right to discriminate against any protected class (eg pregnancy, disability, and all the others) so long as the person they're discriminating against isn't an employee. This is clearly bullshit, and I'm sure if people started discriminating against Christians they'd be up in arms.

Thankfully, this settlement does not in any way strengthen this ruling, it only gives one asshole permission by one state - there is no ruling here, just an out of court settlement, thus it does not extend to anyone else. In particular, the state probably thought that because there was no injured party actually being discriminated against there wasn't much point wasting time and money litigating.

Obligatory IANAL.

"I don't want to treat black people or LGBTQ like human beings." -- like that? Or how about signs on businesses "No Gays" or "No Hispanics". Does this apply to government entities and their employees? How about it enough people don't want to drink out of the same public fountain as black people, should we then bring back segregated fountains since everyone has a right to drink from fountains?

Sorry, but showing bigotry cannot be accepted by a tolerant society because it breaks the one tenet of such a society: be tolerant.

The thing you're ignoring is that being rejected by businesses is harmful to those being rejected. And moreover public businesses discriminating is a great way to fracture society and uphold a culture of bigotry and discrimination that then bleeds into every other area. If your religion teaches you to be a bigoted asshole then you need a different religion.

If you run a business, you don't have a right to discriminate against whole groups of people.

Yeah no. Replace gay with with black and you have your answer . There was a civil rights era fought over this exact discrimination. The sctous is currently full of political hacks.

They just took away our right not to be discriminated against and not a peep out of anyone. All those people, for years, fighting for civil rights. Gone. It’s the frog in the pot strategy but I doubt the religious will wait long to use this.

Soon we will hear about waitresses and barbers not wanting to do their job because muh religion gave them an excuse to discriminate

Then rejecting a Christian should be perfectly legal. Soery mate, O don't serve christians because I'm atheist.

It isn't.